Stiff 1981

I truly love Power Pop with all my heart, thanks to early weanings on Big Star, The Posies, The Beatles and things of that nature. There’s a downside to it, though – more than almost any other genre of music, it can seem very contrived when not done right. This is because generally, the people who make Power Pop are extremely gung ho about it, and are dedicated to keeping it alive. This is a good thing, but dedication is not the same as inspiration, and if you’re too dedicated and not inspired enough, the idea pool gets pretty shallow.

Though I like Any Trouble quite a bit, they seem to suffer from this problem. A product of the highly influential late-seventies London indie label Stiff Records, the band was marketed as a punk/new wave band, but their music is actually closer to pub rock. In the first couple listens through their second album Wheels In Motion, it’s hard to not compare lead singer/songwriter Clive Gregson to Elvis Costello. Granted, this comparison has probably been made hundreds of times in the past (if Any Trouble had been more popular, it would have been thousands), and big fans of the band quibble about it being an unfair one. It’s not. If anything, it’s just glaringly obvious and Any Trouble lovers are sick of hearing about it. Gregson’s songwriting is similar to Costello’s as well, albeit leaning more towards the early-to-mid eighties Costello sound.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, Any Trouble fans, let me say this – I really like Wheels In Motion. All previous observations aside, about halfway through the second listen, I realized despite the over-production and Gregson’s at-times-cringeworthy grandiosity, it’s a record full of solid tunes. Opener “Trouble With Love” immediately transports the listener back to the time of those early DIY Power Pop singles, a time when it was the norm to cram as many hot hooks and melodies into one song as possible. These days, with shuffle-footed, meandering Indie Rock taking over, people hear stuff like Any Trouble and their first reaction is “These guys are trying too hard.” I even started thinking that for a second, because I’ll admit it, I love Deerhunter and Kurt Vile and all that really subtle, mumbly stuff. But when I think about it, maybe it’s the other way around – maybe songwriters these days aren’t trying hard enough, and this overwhelming sense of laziness has permeated the human race so deeply that we are all starting to actually appreciate it. Listening to Wheels In Motion makes me wish music could be more like it today, even if Gregson and Co. take the idea of constant, pummelling hooks and melodies a bit too far at times.

I grow more appreciative of the record with each successive track – the second song, “Open Fire”, is a full-blown Power Pop anthem, with enough crowd sing-along opportunities to fill a football stadium. “To Be A King” is cheesey yet charming, one of those tracks that takes a couple listens to penetrate the dated production and arrangement. Once that is done, however, underneath lies a melody that has the potential to get lodged deep in the brain for days. One of the album’s best songs is “As Lovers Do”, an irresistible ode to failed relationships that uniformally presents the band at their full potential while underlining one of their major themes. “It’s true, we don’t act as lovers do,” Gregson sings. It’s pretty heartbreaking, but it’s also sonic candy – a combination that usually proves awesome. ***1/2

Listening Again? Definitely

Elektra 1995

I picked up this special Record Store Day release becuase I love Kim Deal. To be a real music geek, it’s almost required – Deal played major roles in the Pixies and the Breeders, two of the most important rock bands of the late-twentieth century. For a music aficionado to say they don’t like her would almost be akin to a math genius saying they don’t like the Pythgorean Theorem. Deal is that important to modern rock music – she brings equal parts fun, brilliance and chaos to her tunes, all wrought with an originality of spirit that is the key to her standout approach.

Pacer was released in between the Breeder’s breakout album (1993′s Last Splash) and their break-the-mold album (2002′s Title TK). The latter was widely disappointing and confusing for fans who discovered the band through Splash, but many long-time fans hail TK as a masterpiece. It’s too bad that Pacer was relelased under a different band name (Deal didn’t want to use Breeders since no other original members were featured on Pacer), because it could have helped to bridge this gap for listeners. Listening to Splash and TK back to back presents quite a hard cutoff – they almost sound like they were recorded by two different bands, and to be fair, the albums were released almost ten years apart. Had Pacer been the Breeders’ follow-up to Splash, it would have given newer fans more of a clue not only to what direction they were heading in for TK, but what the band was really all about to begin with. “Cannonball” is a great song, but it’s not a definitive Breeders track – it’s way catchier and way less experiemental than almost anything they have done. That’s why Pacer could have been such a happy medium – it boasts a good chunk of catchy tunes, as well as the no holds barred experimentation hardcore Breeders fans have come to know and love.

Beyond that, Pacer is a damn good record. There are some aspects of the album that seem, well, uncomfortable during initial listens – random tempo changes, odd sound effects and recording techniques, and strange, lo-fi-psychedelia permeate the album. People have claimed that Deal gets off on alienating her listeners, but I completely disagree. What she gets off on is doing things her way, and she knows there are lots of people out there who really dig “her way”. She probably feels lucky to have anyone like that at all, and simply doesn’t want to compromise what she wants (and obviously, what they want) for something millions of other random people who couldn’t care less about the next Breeders album would want. It’s almost as if Deal treats herself and her musical exploits like a secret club, with her own little Dealster members. (She’s like the original Lady Gaga! I’m kidding, of course…but only partially.) If that’s the case, I say jolly damn good show, Ms. Deal, especially since you made a more than worthy follow up to one Breeders album and put another band’s name on it only to put out your next album – your most challenging one to date – as the Breeders. That takes balls, and you just KNOW her record company was not happy with this decision. And she probably loved that!

Let’s set all that nonsense aside and talk about the tunes, though. There is no “Cannonball”, but none of these songs are starving for a good, sing-able Deal melody (except for the uber-experimental psychedelic tune “Hoverin’” which, though it sounds as if the band is just messing around in the studio, was recorded by the Breeders a couple years earlier). “Breaking the Split Screen Barrier” is the song that best combines Deal’s knack for great melody and her stubborn experimental ways, and “Bragging Party” (which was also released as a special 7″ last Record Store Day), with it’s single potential, proves Deal didn’t take the experimental approach for a lack of great ideas. I also love the fact that Pacer contains a song co-written with fellow Daytonite Robert Pollard (of Guided by Voices) – technically two songs, but Deal combined them into one, “I Am Decided”. Pollard gave them as a gift to Deal as a gesture of thanks in return for her producing a couple GBV sessions (which would end up on my favorite GBV album Under the Bushes, Under the Stars). It definitely makes sense to me why Pollard and Deal get along – they both seem to put all their energy into making their songs as weird as possible, since writing great ones just seems to come naturally. ***1/2

Listening Again? Yes

Two videos were made for the album, one for the title track and one for “Tipp City”…

…but I like these songs better.

Frontier 1988

Thank heavens for Love Garden Sounds and Kief’s Music. Thanks to these amazing record stores, I am able to live in Kansas without having to buy my CDs and vinyls from Hastings (OK, I bought one vinyl from Hastings ONCE, but it was a copy of one of my all-time favorite records – Meat Puppets II – for fifteen bucks, so sue me). Both stores always have all sorts of awesome stuff, like this American Music Club record I acquired at Love Garden. I can’t imagine there are tons of Kansas folks who really dig on AMC, since head songwriter Mark Eitzel is so stubborn about making his songs as slow and depressing as possible. Perhaps the Kansan who bought this copy of California originally saw the name American Music Club and expected some sort of Ted Nugent or Allman Brothers Band kind of thing, and if that’s the case, I would have paid over a million dollars to see their reaction to the opening track “Firefly” before they immediately took it to Love Garden to sell it back. And I would have laughed at them, because they are stupid – “Firefly” is a damn fine tune. One of my pet peeves about people and music is when folks hear something and say “It’s just really not my thing.” I always think, OK, so you can only stand listening to one style of music? Like, all P.O.D., all the time? How fucking boring and closed-minded of you!

Granted, because of sheer melancholy alone, Eitzel is not everyone’s cup of tea – it actually took me quite awhile to warm up to him. Years, even. He’s on par with songwriters like Mark Kozelek, only compared to Kozelek’s deadpan delivery, Eitzel often sounds like he is in physical pain, or possibly dying. He’s one of those songwriters you can listen to for years and years and years and never get it until finally, one day it’s all foggy and cold out and you feel totally alone and depressed or just kind of sad or whatever and BOOM! It works. Everything has to fall into place for it to work, but it eventually does. This is why Eitzel will most likely never find a place in the mainstream, but will always be able to float by on cult status alone – once you get him, you’re a fan for life.

California is AMC’s third record, and though it isn’t quite their best, it definitely has a few of their best songs. “Firefly”, “Blue and Grey Shirt” and “Last Harbor” are all wonderfully gut-wrenching and beautiful tunes, and though they still probably won’t jump out of the speakers to a first-time Eitzellian, it’s the kind of music that rewards committed patience. California contains one horrible song (“Bad Liqour”, which sounds like the band fucking around in the studio) and a few that are kinda blah, but I gave this record three spins last night, and it got better with each one. ****

Listening again? Definitely

Warner Bros 1975

I’ve heard tons of America songs over the years, but I never even realized it. That’s always cool to me, when you’re just casually listening to some record and a song pops up that you know. It transforms the whole experience and makes you listen a little closer, and in my case makes me want to look up a bunch of info on Wikipedia and the like. It was a domino effect with History, America’s greatest hits record – I put it on thinking I would only know two of the songs, realized I knew more like five or six, started looking at the album cover more closely and realized it was produced by George Fucking Martin, looked up the Wikiness and realized late SNL great Phil Hartman did the album cover, and BOOM! Now I’m kind of in love with it.

I only say “kind of” in love with it because a lot of the songs themselves are kinda blah. There are some good ideas floating around, but there’s a reason these guys were a bigger success on the adult contemporary charts than they were on the normal ones. There’s a breezy, almost yacht-rock (but more Midwest-sounding….prairie rock, I guess) vibe to all the songs that makes them run together a bit. Some of the songs rip each other off hardcore, like two of the band’s biggest hits, “Ventura Highway” and “A Horse With No Name”, which utilize almost the exact same vocal hook. But, I have to hand it to America – they were barely out of their teens when they put out their first record, which garnered a #1 single right out of the gate. And in the case of that song (“Horse”), it’s one of those big-ass hits that’s a pretty good song – again, it’s a bit blah, but there are some good things going on. I actually learned to like it a little more after it was brilliantly featured in an episode of my favorite show on TV, Breaking Bad (the episode was even named after it). Also, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have George Martin producing (as well as remixing the tracks he didn’t produce initially), who brings an undeniable ear-candy quality to America’s songs.

Let’s put it into perspective – History is a greatest hits collection released after five albums in only four years by America, and it contains 12 tracks with 3 #1 hits and at least four other pretty major ones. That’s really impressive for any band, let alone a band that was so young at the time. America still tours and has a really loyal fan base, so yeah, even though I know I’ll never be that fanatical about this band, I can definitely admit they have done a lot of things right. I’m glad I own this if only for “Sister Golden Hair”, which is a damn fine tune. Martin produced that George Harrison-esque slide guitar so knowingly, and lovingly, and it just works. ***1/2

Listening Again? Most likely

Warner Bros 1972

The Alice Cooper records in which Alice Cooper was still a band, and not just the one dude, were pretty sweet. I don’t know them all that well, and I’m not even very familiar with many AC songs other than the well-known ones and a few others, but I have listened to records like Billion Dollar Babies, Easy Action and Killer, and I greatly appreciate and observe the difference between the two eras. If you’re bothering at all with Alice Cooper, it had better be the group era, or you’re either a glutton for punishment or you just enjoy wasting your time.

With that said, I’m not sure School’s Out is the best place to start diving into the group’s discography. Of course it’s got a few killer tracks – who doesn’t love “School’s Out”, after all? The rest of the album feels a little disjointed, however. There are weird forays into vaudeville and jazz and other things that I didn’t think would have anything to do with a rock record called School’s Out. But then again, there is a certain vibe of just kind of fucking around, maybe in the garage after school really HAS just been let out for the summer and every little thing all of a sudden becomes 100 times more fun because you know you have nothing but time, at least for awhile. That’s something about School’s Out I definitely appreciate.

Another thing I love about it is the album art – the vinyl sleeve is made up to look like an old school desk. It even opens and has all the bad boy stuff in there, like the slingshot and the switch blade and the comic books. The back of the record even acts as the bottom of the desk, and has legs that fold out so you can stand it up. It’s an extremely cool package, one of those uber-elaborate ones that the record company approved because they thought they had a hit on their hands – which, I guess they did. Originally, the vinyl came wrapped in lady panties, but those issues were recalled (sadly, yet understandably).

My favorite song on the record is “My Stars”, which showcases AC’s interest in prog, and in a way foreshadows more of the grandiose direction they would take on Billion Dollar Babies. It’s long and dramatic, but when it’s done well, I’m a sucker for that stuff. Also, it seems like it’s the product of a slightly higher creative tier when compared with most of School’s Out. Overall, though, it’s a fun record with some great tunes. ***

Listening Again? Sure

Columbia 1976

Aerosmith may have descended into self parody over their 40+ year career, but how could that be avoided? The longer your band is around, the longer you have to pay to keep it around, and eventually, some aspect of it is going to get cheapened. Name me one band that’s been together longer than 30 years that hasn’t cheapened themselves in some way. Aerosmith definitely falls into this category, but before they met this fate, they were a pretty kickass band.

Let’s not focus on the bad times, though – let’s deal with the record at hand, which is indicative of Aerosmith’s greatest era. Rocks is a powerhouse – “Back in the Saddle” is one of the best boot-to-the-face opening tracks ever, so well-recorded that it still has the ability to sound new and fresh up against anything put out today. The whole album has that knockout Zeppelin sound, with those roomy drums and razor-sharp guitar licks, and most of the tunes live up to that presentation. “Sick as a Dog” has always been one of my favorite Aerosmith jams, as it showcases their more melodic abilities, and “Nobody’s Fault” openly plays tribute to the Zep in more than just it’s title (again, see Joey Kramer’s great Bonham impression).

Though the band is obviously fishing for the Zeppelin comparisons, they certainly deserve them. It would be impossible to come even close without a phenomenal drummer, and Joey Kramer fits that bill – he’s a freakin’ monster behind the kit, and Jack Douglas’ exceptional drum production captures its raw power in all of it’s roomy glory. And of course, if your band was REALLY trying to rip Led Zep, you would need an incendiary guitar player, and Aerosmith has that covered without question. Despite the pitfalls of their later years, Joe Perry has always been and will always remain a badass. Actually, I’m not sure Aerosmith could have survived this long without his presence – there’s just something about his don’t-give-a-fuck persona that keeps people at ease. The band was on the brink of extinction when they tried to release an album without him or bassist Tom Hamilton (see Rock in a Hard Place for one of rock’s most excruciating missteps), and only managed to survive when both members returned.

Nowadays, it’s tough to watch Aerosmith strut around like they can still write good tunes or even still rock in a worthy fashion, but because of the fact they made records like Rocks once upon a time, they deserve at least partial forgiveness. There is a reason this band has been a cultural mainstay for so long – they are what many of our parents got stoned to in their high school days, like my Built to Spill or Flaming Lips, or your Black Keys, or whatever, and their best music still evokes that spirit. ****

Listening Again? Definitely

A&M 1983

My record collection is full of the most random stuff. One of the main reasons for that is the fact that here in Lawrence, every year there’s this big music and equipment expo out at the fairgrounds, and you can get a whole huge bag of records for $5. This is the only scenario in which I would ever end up with a Bryan Adams album. I was poking through these thousands of vinyls looking for ANYTHING at all that I might even remotely enjoy, and upon seeing Reckless I said to myself, “It has ‘Summer of ’69′ on it. That’s a great jam. It has to at least be worth it to own that tune on vinyl, right?” And Cuts Like A Knife was right there, so I grabbed it as well. It was the same story with the Abba records, although after listening to Bryan Adams, I can say I definitely value the Abba records more…and I didn’t even like them all that much!

To me, Bryan Adams is the definition of a “professional songwriter”, and that’s not a complement. Something about his songs just screams desperation, like he’s always pulling out all the stops to write a hit. That’s his only real goal with all of this, is to make money. Sure, that’s a goal with a lot of musicians and songwriters, but for Bryan Adams, it’s THE goal, and all of his songs just reek of that tepid, formulaic approach. It gets REALLY sad when he starts busting out that lame-ass white-boy blues routine, or tries to go for that bad-boy-in-a-leather-jacket thing. It’s just like, c’mon dude, you’re a skinny little Canadian bitch. There’s nothing “badass” about you. It’s even funnier, then, that Reckless was placed at no. 49 in Kerrang! magazine’s 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time. I guess the leather jacket helped Adams there.

Cuts Like A Knife is a really boring album with one decent song, that being the title track. I had a lot of preconceived notions about Bryan Adams before listening to these records, and the first three songs on Cuts proved most of those to be true – contrived, overly-cheesy wannabe radio hits peppered among white-boy blues filler. This was Adams’ third album and the album that broke him into the mainstream. If it was really that much better than the first two records, I can’t begin to imagine how awful those things are.

A&M 1984

Reckless was easier for me to get through, most likely because it contains at least 5 songs I already knew really well – “Summer of ’69″, “Heaven”, “Somebody”, “Run to You” and “Kids Wanna Rock”. I like a few of these songs, especially “Summer of 69″, which everyone likes, even those who really hate Bryan Adams. It’s the best example of his approach, and seemingly the one tune in which he and co-writer Jim Vallance really gelled their ideas. Everything else just seems so general and vapid, which could explain why Bryan Adams had so many hits.

Cuts Like A Knife *1/2 Listening Again? No
Reckless ** Listening Again? Doubtful

Atlantic 1978

AC/DC have been getting unfairly lumped in with a lot of inferior dumb rock bands recently, and younger generations are seemingly starting to devalue them. I am here to reiterate the importance of AC/DC. Sure, they are a dumb rock band, but only in the most organic and unpretentious sense. If they weren’t the first of their breed, they were certainly the first that really did it right and set a solid precedent for what good, hard rock and roll should sound like. If You Want Blood…You’ve Got It is the band’s definitive album because it’s the only solid live portrait of the Bon Scott era – the best era – and the live setting is so important to the AC/DC experience.

The song selection is nearly flawless, and though it’s disheartening that, since this album’s release predates Highway to Hell by two years, we don’t get a good chunk of Bon Scott classics, very little is left to be desired in that area. One gripe is the inclusion of “The Jack”, which is surely better experienced at a live show for audience participation related reasons, but the indomitable spirit of the band saves them – they know how to transfer their sense of fun through speakers alone. The fact that you can’t see any of them doesn’t detract from the experience at all – even if we haven’t seen AC/DC live, we’ve all heard the drill. You know Angus is up there is his schoolboy outfit, busting the Chuck Berry moves and shit-kicking like a little kid all over the place. You know Malcom Young, under-appreciated chief riffmaster, is hanging back, chugging along mightily in patented palm-muting glory. You can FEEL Phil Rudd, the backbone of it all, keeping the beat with an ogre-like intensity. And finally, even just hearing Bon Scott’s pure-attitude-drenched howl is enough to make you feel like you’re there. He’s as real as it gets.

The graphic nature of the album cover probably helps to channel the intended experience as well, and really, it’s one of the best live album covers out there. It’s an amazing album overall, but I can only imagine what kind of live album AC/DC could have made had Scott lived even another two years. The songs would have been better, the band would have been even tighter, and a live record like that would have been untouchable. But if If You Want Blood is all we’ve got, that’s OK, because it’s thrilling stuff. It’s the kind of record I bust out when I start getting bored with music, and it has a tangible electricity to it that jolts you awake and reminds you that music can come alive. ****1/2

Listening Again? Regularly

Atlantic 1979

I decided to lump these last two Abba albums together for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s true what most say about Abba – you really only need the greatest hits collection (in the case of Abba there are several, but the consensus seems to be that Gold is the best). Secondly, after three Abba albums, they all start to kind of blend together anyway. As I’ve stated previously, they have a formula they do not deviate from too often – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I found Voulez-Vous to be pretty odd in that it started off fantastic – “As Good As New”, the title track, and “I Have A Dream” are all instantly catchy blows to the ear – and ended up sounding wimpy, puttering off like an old Volkswagon with a bad muffler. It’s just very obviously front-loaded, and after how great those first three tracks are, there’s nothing on the rest of the record to really back them up.

Atlantic 1980

Super Trouper is a similar affair, though even less interesting. Here, the songs sound campier than ever, and this coupled with the even-cheesier-than-normal production make for a somewhat sluggish affair. It does contain one of their best songs, the excruciating break-up classic “The Winner Takes It All”, but nearly everything else slips into the filler category. Plus, the last track (“The Way Old Friends Do”) is an awkward live (or faux live) recording that seems to go for this grandiose ending, but just sounds really out of place.

Voulez-Vous: **1/2 Listening Again? Perhaps
Super Trouper: ** Listening Again? Doubtful

Atlantic 1977

Thanks to my recent undertaking of listening to and reviewing every album I own, I now have three Abba albums to get through in the next three days. That’s a lot of Abba, and it kind of worried me at first. But after checking out The Album, I’m actually pretty excited. It also helps that I read Chuck Klosterman’s brilliant article on ABBA fairly recently (from his book Eating the Dinosaur), in which he deconstructs their distinguished formula and explains why they are one of the greatest groups of all time. It’s a great read, and you should check it out.

Abba are one of those older groups that can get a pretty hard time from young people simply because people can view their sound as kind of dated. After all, Abba pretty much defines the sound of hits in their era. But that’s the thing – this is a sound Abba cultivated, and other people ripped off from them.

Of course it’s easy for things to sound a little dated 30 years later, but parts of The Album still seem pretty fresh. Hits like “Name of the Game” and “Take A Chance On Me” still ring true thanks to the fact that they are just genuinely good songs. They are perfect examples of the “Abba formula” of sweet melodies, hot guitar licks and top-notch songwriting precision, all swirled in with candied harmonized and gang-style female vocals. Granted, they do this over, and over, and over again, but it’s because they know if they stick to it, they’ll eventually come up with gold. It’s a good strategy, and though it isn’t as successful as often as it should be on The Album, perfecting an art takes time, and I still have two more Abba records to spin. ***

Listening Again? Probably.